East Syria Economy in Ruins as US Destroys Privately-Owned Refineries

The economy of eastern, ISIS-held Syria is in ruins after some of the ugliest cases of civilian infrastructure targeting in years by US warplanes, as officials bragged about cutting off “ISIS funding” by wiping out most of the oil refineries in the area.

It’s presented as a destruction of “ISIS oil refineries,” but they’re not. They’re actually privately-owned refineries belonging to individuals and small companies in the region.

ISIS indeed gets some of the proceeds from the sales through taxation, like any de facto state does. Yet the concerted effort to cripple the economy of a region filled with millions of people with military strikes is definitely a war crime, and one the US is gleefully bragging about.

For civilians in ISIS-held territory, the price of refined petroleum has spiked dramatically in the past week, with the US attacks wiping out a lot of the supply. That’s the lifeblood of the oil rich region’s economy, and the war’s clearly not going to stop there.

Yesterday, the US warplanes also attacked multiple grain silos in eastern Syria, killing civilians and destroying a large amount of stored food. Though the initial assessment was that this was an accidental targeting, the US war seems to be aiming for these sorts of targets, and less and less concerned about the civilians it kills along the way.

5 thoughts on “East Syria Economy in Ruins as US Destroys Privately-Owned Refineries”

With the grain silo attack, the Israelis probably told the US those were ICBM silos with missiles ready to launch. After all, Netanyahu has been making this claim about Iran for years, so why not ISIS?

They are doing it knowingly, George W. Bush meaning of bombing Iraq was to destroy iraq to ruins, because George W. Bush was the enemy of Iraqi people, the Obama's method is the same on Syria, that's because USG is the enemy of the syrian people and friends of Saudis/Qatari/UAE barbarians trained by USG to destroy Syria. Otherwise, they could go after oil companies Mafiosi black market in Tyrkey, EU and in USA.

The true nature of this conflict is becoming more and more clear. Just as the Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza made it clear what their strategy was – complete destruction of the Gazan infrastructure – the US is using the same playbook against the Syrian people.

The American people said quite clearly when asked previously that they are not interested in any further US adventurism in the ME, Syria specifically, and this is how the USG has decided to invalidate the American citizen's wishes.

An Empire functions upon the illusion that by the articulate application of deadly force, brutal imperialism, a nation may be achieved where everyone gets to “Self-actualize, to be all you can be, own all you can own and to be a dictator over all who are on land that you own.”

Problem is, all this obsession with land ownership that goes on in an Empire, this requires the enslavement of the majority of society, which is commonly referred to as instability, as it invariably leads to the kind of blowback that has always caused an Empire to expire in a convulsion.

The US did this in Iraq, went after the infratructure and this is no different. It is all about over-throwing Assad and the US doesn't care who comes into power as they can take them out next. By the time the US is done bombing, the entire country will be in ruins. The prize is still Iran.